Federation Square, Melbourne [AUSTRALIA]

Federation Square lies just across the river from Southgate, opposite Flinders Street Station and the graceful St Paul’s Cathedral. One of the most ambitious and complex projects ever undertaken in Victoria, it involved building across the Flinders Street railway yards, where work was limited to the early hours of the morning so trains would not be disrupted. Conceived as a tribute to the first 100 years of Australian nationhood, the Square – which links the CBD with the Yarra, fusing art, architecture, culture and hospitality into a distinct public space with crazy paving-style facades of geometric panels – opened in late 2002, almost two years after the centenary of federation.
Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett’s most costly public monument, it was completed by the Bracks government bearing a price tag of almost $460 million (three times over budget). Often referred to as the city’s “new heart”, it’s also been described by one Melbourne humorist as its “spleen”, given that it was “odd, misshapen and nobody’s really quite sure what it does”. One thing everybody’s in agreement about is its size: covering an entire block, its sheer enormity changes for the first time in over 150 years the famous grid of streets laid out by Hoddle (see p.217) by extending the CBD further towards the river.
The Square includes an expansive plaza of 500,000 sandstone cobblestones from the Kimberleys in Western Australia, which affords commanding views of Melbourne’s riverside and cityscape. There’s also a soaring glass and metal Meccano-style atrium, evolved from the same triangular geometry as the building’s facades, connecting galleries, an amphitheatre, the TV studios of multicultural broadcaster SBS, and a plethora of new plaza cafes, bars, shops and
restaurants like Chocolate Buddha and Reserve.